Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday January 27, 2011 @05:13PM
from the do-you-defend-him-to-your-death? dept.

tekgoblin writes "The courts have just issued a temporary restraining order against George Hotz (Geohot). Sony filed this lawsuit because they were unhappy that Geohot had released the Playstation 3 decryption keys so other people could play unsigned games on it. [Geohot is prohibited from] 'offering to the public, creating, posting online, marketing, advertising, promoting, installing, distributing, providing, or otherwise trafficking' in any software or methods for circumventing the PS3's protection methods. No longer can he 'provide links from any website to any other website' relating to such matters, or publish any information obtained by hacking the PS3. And more to the point, he can no longer 'engage in acts of circumvention of TPMS in the PS3 System to access, obtain, remove, or traffic in copyrighted works.' Pretty much he can't talk or think about the PS3 for some time."

If I were Geohotz, I wouldn't even be doing that. I might do some research on the PS3 in my spare time, but nothing would be published until the court case is over. Then, once the cheque comes form Sony paying his legal bills, release that research. His lawyer is probably telling him (for his own good) to STFU for a bit.

Having had a read through the court docs that have come to light thus far, I'd say Geohotz has this case in the bag if his legal representation can stand up.

What makes you think he will get a check? Sony is a global behemoth. They will tie him up in the court system/s for a decade or until we either forget about him, he gets tired of it, or he goes broke. The court systems of the world these days are far removed from reality and instead based on manipulating laws and precedent to one's advantage. Really, this case should be about the fundamental principal of what he did rather than what it "could possibly do one day". After all, we don't sue the blacksmith beca

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember that first growing in popularity after the release of the miniseries [wikipedia.org] of the same name. Since it depicted an America ruled by a cold Soviet style control and now we are seeing more and more that same control only in the hands of the megacorps that now pretty much rules this country (just look at how many laws are written by the corporations and just rubber stamped by elected officials, such as DMCA and endless copyrights) I assume some would see it as appropriate.

Me personally the way the corps run the country reminds me of the late great philosopher/ comedian Bill Hicks and his take on things [youtube.com] which is sadly probably even more true now than when he did it 20 years ago. The fact that the courts can take away his right to speak because it would impact a corps bottom line is frankly disgusting to me.

No, seriously. Our fucked-up senile delinquents on the Supreme Court have ruled that everything under the goddamn sun falls under the "interstate commerce clause."

Want to grow your own wheat to feed to your own chickens, which means you didn't have to buy someone else's wheat? Sorry. ""Interstate Commerce." [google.com]

The same crap comes up in just about any argument. Want to regulate guns? Well sure, they might conceivably be sold across state lines. Even if the original factory won't sell them out of state, a rebuyer might, or someone might buy one and ship it to someone later or someone from out of state could buy it and transport it themselves or or.... yeah. You get the picture. Regulate food, regulate clothes, everything under the damn sun can be regulated under the "interstate commerce clause"... a clause originally intended to merely stop the various states from erecting tax stations and charging "import tariffs" on each other's borders, as was happening under the Articles of Confederation....

I've wondered if a criminal defendent could use the interstate commerce clause against a state law.

For example, someone is prosecuted under state law for some offence. Criminal defendent says: "but this affects interstate commerce, hence it is the province of the federal governement to regulate it -- and, by the way, there isn't a federal law prohibiting this offense". Since the Supremes have completely gutted any limit to the interstate commerce clause, it's hard to imagine any activity that could not be described as affecting interstate commerce. Unless there is a federal law that specifically allows the states to regulate that activity, it seems like it would be an interesting tactic.

I've thought for a while now that we need to get rid of the interstate commerce clause, and put in its place more specific rules. Even if it didn't change anything, it would help settle Congress's power into what it is now and prevent future expansion. If it needs toned down from there, that can be done afterwards.

>>>Want to regulate guns? Well sure, they might conceivably be sold across state lines.

Well here's some good news: The Supreme Court recently over-turned the Central Government's gun ban near schools. They said that calling it interstate commerce was a step too far, and that proper jurisdiction for local schools belongs to the Member State government, not the Congress.

Like this hasn't been covered a billion times before...you don't own the software, you own the hardware. You can modify the hardware all you want but the catch is that it's pretty much useless without the software.

How dare you think that silly, old piece of paper called the US Constitution should somehow be allowed to slow (or God forbid stop) any corporation from being able to extract every last penny from their victims (errr customers)???.

This is America, bitches! This is were you only *think* you can own something. Where you can "buy" a PS3 knowing you can load another OS (until they decide otherwise).

This is America, where you can "buy" a DVR at Best Buy for $199.00 only to have to return it to DirecTV after you cancel service or they will charge you another $250.00 for that thing you already "bought".

This is America, where odds are you can punch your local taxi driver right in the face and steal his wallet and get less of a penalty than if you, GOD Forbid, share that song that you already "bought" on vinyl, then "bought" on cassette, and maybe "bought" CD. Fuck those stupid hold-up victims, the real victims are the music and media companies and the fines imposed on those caught sharing prove that out.

And, finally, this is America, where you can be punished for pointing out that the security of the product you "bought" was designed by ass clowns. Of course if one of those corporations ever fucks up and breaks a law or two (Sony root kits anyone?), well, tough shit...that YOUR problem...That's what all you stupid-fucking-morons (oh, sorry we mean victims, er, no that not it...we mean "customers"). Yeah that's the funny word we corporations call you - customers. Anyhow, yeah, tough shit, customers, that is what you get by not being able to afford an army of lobbyists yourselves.

This is AMERICA bitches! The best fucking government (Democrat or Republican lead - it don't matter) that money can buy. Stupid Constitution wavers....

You could make a good case for a large proportion of Federal laws. The Supreme Court might even agree in a few of them, but unless you can show that you've personally been harmed by the law and are lucky enough to win the being-heard-by-the-supreme-court lottery, then it won't help you.

Maybe if you introduced the death penalty for any politician who voted for an unconstitutional law, then the constitution would have teeth. As it is, it's easy to pass an unconstitutional law and very hard to get one overt

Nah, let's just make it "1 strike and you're out". If you introduce a bill that becomes a law and is eventually ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, you lose your seat in Congress and are barred for some period of time from holding any seat in Congress.

Why is it treason to pass a law that wasn't envisaged by the agrarian founders?

Now, I'm not for the DMCA, but to treat the Consitution like holy writ is wrong. The founders were not omnipotent, clairvoient or even particularly extraordinary men; the constitution as they declared it was to define a set of principles they thought fair. The reason why we have the amendments we have today is because through the years the American public has decided that the founders either didn't think some things through, or w

That's beside the point, which is that fiddling with your Playstation 3 is not fucking bank robbery. It's not murder. It's not terrorism. It's not even spitting on the fucking sidewalk.

I may not be able to rob a bank, but I can write a book about robbing banks, even if it requires me to research the topic by learning to crack safes.

Geohot fiddled with his PS3. He published what he learned.

Here, I'll even give a car analogy for the pudknockers who want Geohot sent to Guantanamo for crimes against humanity.

I can buy a Ford Focus, and if I had the skill and the means, I could drop in some engine (even from a different manufacturer) that could make the Focus go 200 mph, which is clearly illegal in all fifty states. That is not the same as driving 200 in a 55 zone.

The DMCA is bullshit, and once the current crop of corrupt ideologue bastards on the Supreme Court are safely retired (or whatever) it's going to be revisited. Besides being horrible law, it hinders innovation which is eventually going to cost us. It applies 19th century standards to 21st century technology and eventually it's going to collapse under its own weight. Either that or we're screwed. On further reflection, we're probably screwed, but that doesn't make the DMCA any less bullshit.

That's beside the point, which is that fiddling with your Playstation 3 is not fucking bank robbery. It's not murder. It's not terrorism. It's not even spitting on the fucking sidewalk.

No, it's something far, far worse than any of these. It's interfering with corporate profits. That's why the government is so keen on clamping down on this guy, or anyone else who releases such information. Remember, in a fascist government, corporate profits are more important than anything else.

Perhaps the next-generation products will get a new name, like NGP, giving him a loophole? If they really are launching a quad-core ARM-based product later this year, some might like to run unrestricted Linux on it.Chances are it'll be expensive. And if Sony gets quad core CPUs / GPUs, others most likely will also.

Why not? He's doing something that may, or may not be illegal. Asking the court to knock it off until the status of his actions is quite reasonable. Now, IMO there isn't much question and what he's doing should be legal, but the court obviously thinks it isn't that obvious.

It's not as if Geohot makes his living hacking PS3s to run pirated games (which is all the restraining order prevents him doing). This is costing him his hobby, and only temporarily if what he's doing is determined to be legal.

Don't like it? Find a politician who will fight to have the law overturned or clarified. Can't find one? Then make one. The Tea party didn't exist 3 years ago. If that particular group of people can become a political force overnight I would hope the geeks of the nation could manage as well.

It's not as if Geohot makes his living hacking PS3s to run pirated games (which is all the restraining order prevents him doing). This is costing him his hobby, and only temporarily if what he's doing is determined to be legal.

That would be true if the TRO didn't have an order of impoundment attached:

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that within ten (10) business days of this Order, Defendant Hotz shall deliver...for impoundment any computers, hard drives, CD-roms, DVDs, USB stick, and any other storage devices on which any Circumvention Devices are stored in Defendant Hotz's possession, custody, or control. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47676627/50-Order-GRANTING-TRO [scribd.com]

...and I'm pretty sure that those devices are his trade tools which means this TRO places a significant and disproportionate burden on him as the defendant.

So other people will invite him to work on their products, which he'll do, and that'll generate buzz and excitement for those products. And they'll win, and Sony will lose. This is awesome! I really have to say, I am amazed at the skill and precision with which Sony has managed the PS3. They've got some kind of dream team working on this. There's a cycle. First, identify the largest clearly identifiable remaining demographic. Second, piss them off. Repeat.

PS3: Buy it for the Other OS feature, keep it because no one will take it off your hands. (No, really. I have a launch 60GB which I bought entirely for the Other OS feature. It's now useless for playing games because games require "updates" that disable the only functionality I got it for, but no one's gonna buy the old loud monster to play video games...)

So other people will invite him to work on their products, which he'll do, and that'll generate buzz and excitement for those products. And they'll win, and Sony will lose. This is awesome! I really have to say, I am amazed at the skill and precision with which Sony has managed the PS3. They've got some kind of dream team working on this. There's a cycle. First, identify the largest clearly identifiable remaining demographic. Second, piss them off. Repeat.

PS3: Buy it for the Other OS feature, keep it because no one will take it off your hands. (No, really. I have a launch 60GB which I bought entirely for the Other OS feature. It's now useless for playing games because games require "updates" that disable the only functionality I got it for, but no one's gonna buy the old loud monster to play video games...)

I would, but then again I like the backwards compatibility and I want a blue ray player:)

So other people will invite him to work on their products, which he'll do, and that'll generate buzz and excitement for those products.

Going to be kinda hard for him to work on anything for a while, since the court order also requires him to turn over his computers and hard drives to Sony. He's unlikely to get them back for months, if ever, and it's going to take yet more lawyer time to get them back. Which is exactly what Sony wanted. This is all about making life difficult for Geohotz because he dared to publish the PS3 root key. It's harassment, plain and simple, and so far, Sony is winning.

I wasn't aware that the only things one could say about the PS3 were related to cracking its protection schemes and pirate! (or, okay, 'traffic in copyrighted works'). He can talk about the games, he can talk about the OS, he can talk about the hardware, he just can't, y'know, talk about how to circumvent any of it. Really, this seems like a relatively reasonable restraining order all around, at least by the metrics for such things; it stops

You say he can talk about the OS. But there's precious little he can say about the OS other than a list of adjectives. Even describing how the OS interfaces with hardware could be seen as contempt of court, even if there isn't any direct or indirect reference on how that could be used for an exploit. I'm sure his lawyers gave him the same advice as the summary, "just don't say anything about it at all for any reason." It's much easier to follow that than to talk about it extensively and be 100% sure tha

Same, Sony actually changed my mind after I had committed to buying a ps3, I was just waiting for a good time to get one.
After the other OS and the related shenanigans( I wanted to play ps1/2 games on it ) screw em!

The better solution is to actually stick to your boycott. Don't buy anything Sony, ever. Making it only "for some time" makes it clear that Sony can do whatever they want so long as they're willing to take a short-term financial hit, and that's assuming there are enough people to even make that point.

Sony made pretty good portable cassette players, so I'll buy those (though as I already have two I probably won't buy another one for quite some time). However, as Sony does not make them anymore (and I am buying them used), Sony still sees none of my money.

Did you also make sure the TV doesn't use any component made by Sony? Or that the company making it didn't license some technology from Sony? It's practically impossible to not pay them directly or indirectly if you buy any complex electronic product.

Yeah, the proprietary "memory sticks" was the first shot across my bow; the rootkit on music CDs that to this day are still infecting people who frequent used CD stores, was the last straw. No Sony in this household.

Less than 18 months ago, I foolishly bought a Sony car radio. It's cr*p. I won't be buying any Sony products again.

As an example, the radio can read mp3s from a flash drive, but, it appears that this only works if the flash drive is less than 4GB. Even then, it seems to be very picky about the format of the filesystem (picky about a FAT filesystem!!!).

It has some other stupid design "features", which are too numerous to mention.

It baffles me that this is not protected like jailbreaking of mobile devices. It is near identical, Full hardware access in order to add features, which some low-lifes use for piracy. You cant blame him for thinking he was within the law on this one, since he is when he does the same thing on his iPod.

Where people earn like 200-400 buck per month? Exactly how do those evil "would never buy it if I had to pay for it" "pirates" harm Sony please?Oh, and by the way, try to find out how many of the hackers out there have actually payed for IDA license. Someone on #ps3test already tried, quite fun to read:

I see this question come up quite often by people who haven't taken the time to actually read up on the jail-breaking exemptions.

Here's a list of the exemptions granted for jail-breaking your devices. Could you please point out the one that would allow breaking the encryption on the PS3 to play cracked games or add functionality?

Thank you.

- Computer users may now bypass external security devices if they do not longer work and cannot be replaced..

Doesn't matter if that's there largest revenue stream, they're screwing over their customers and reducing the functionality of hardware they've already sold. If they were incompetent enough to assume that the system couldn't be broken, then they deserve what comes to them.

It's more surprising that they think this will accomplish anything other than harassing this one guy. The damage is done -- everyone who wanted the keys has them, and there's nothing Sony can do about that.

I would hardly call the PS3 restriction system "minimal" -- just take a look at the combination of hacks that was needed to finally crack it. Frankly, the way Sony screwed up ECDSA signing was just dumb luck -- had they not screwed up (i.e. had they implemented ECDSA signing correctly), it would have been significantly harder to crack the PS3.

I do not agree with the DMCA or the way it is abused by companies like Sony, but this is not a case of minimal effort.

Paintiff has submitted substantial evidence showing that defendant George Hotz has violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(A), 120(b)(1). Plaintiff has also submitted evidence demonstrating that plaintiff is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of relief, and that the balance of hardships favors plaintiff.

Once the keys were out there, the irreparable harm was done. There is no "relief" whatsoever provided by this order. It's vindictive intimidation, plain and simple.

I'm also disappointed that the judge decided to assert jurisdiction despite the obvious fact that it's well within SCEA's means to file suit in New Jersey, and clearly places a significant burden on the defendant to appear in California. The fact that SCEA wanted this case heard in Northern California has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that it's the "proper venue" and everything to do with forum shopping. I can only surmise that the judge was rationalizing her decision to participate in what will undoubtedly be a precedent setting case should it go to trial, which doesn't speak highly of either her integrity or judgement. Signing her name to a paper stating that the plaintiff's case is "likely to succeed on the merits," shows either a bias in favor of SCEA, ignorance of the facts, or both. Mr. Hotz has repeatedly stated that he does not condone piracy, none of the PS3 tools he has released directly facilitate piracy, and in fact, none of the tools he's ever released on any platform has directly facilitated piracy. Sony's keys, while ostensibly a trade secret, are not subject to IP law protections, and even if they were, they were obtained through lawful reverse engineering of property sold to the defendant(s).

In summary, we have some really crappy laws, and those charged with upholding them don't seem to be much better.

I agree with most everything in the parent post and would also like to add that it's pretty clear that the ECDSA signing keys do not, in fact, compromise a "circumvention device or technique". Suggesting that a set of secret numbers, unto itself, forms a device or technique is stretching the meaning of the words past the breaking point. Further, the part of the order which requires him to turn over to Sony all computers, hard drives, etc. which contain circumvention devices presupposes that he actually has software which would legally be considered a circumvention device. It is not at all clear from the publicly known facts that he possesses anything which would qualify. All of the stuff which he has released has been about gaining access to the hardware without gaining access to any of Sony's software, firmware, etc. The PS3 is not, itself, a copyrighted work. The best that they can argue is that the firmware and OS which run on the PS3 are. That is a silly, but potentially successful legal argument (as the courts have previously held the communicating with running copyrighted software or firmware is a form of "gaining access to a protected work" in several cases, including the Bnetd case despite that being an idiotic interpretation of the language of the DMCA). So that would work as an argument, unless, of course, the keys you've released are the keys used to sign boot loaders and bypass loading any of Sony's firmware or software at all, which, as it happens, are exactly those keys which Geohot released.

So the question is what happens if he complies with the last part of the order by giving them an empty box and saying "I don't have circumvention devices"? Presumably, more legal fun would ensue. I'm curious if that's the tack he'll take. I probably would in his case, since turning anything over to them is tantamount to an admission of violating the DMCA.

If there was anything in the Judge's order that smelled of misconduct to me, it would be that she is hearing the case in the first place rather than in NJ (where geohot is) or somewhere with an actual Sony corporate office at the time the suit was filed.

AFAICT, the whole argument there was that they claimed one of the Does was likely to live in CA, so they had standing to sue in CA. Does that mean that I can simply add an unidentified Doe to any suit I want and move the case to whatever jurisdiction I want to pretend he’s in?

More importantly, does this mean that if that particular Doe is discovered not to be in CA that they have no claim to standing in that jurisdiction and would need to throw the case out and start over in an appropriate locale?

IANAL, so I would love some clarification on this one, because it honestly confuses me.

This order really doesn't say much about the ability of courts in the US to follow even basic procedures.

"Hotz is ordered to appear before the court at 10:00am on January __ 2011."

There's a scribble about parties arranging their own hearing date after that, but this is simply unacceptable. Hotz is supposed to engage with a team of Sony legal sharks and the court expects them to act honestly? They could arrange one date with the court and give him another.

Sony should have left the "Other OS" feature on and just "unsupported." There was a link on/. last time this came up to a black hat conference on the trend of gameOS hacking. Sony PS3 enjoyed the longest time in recently history from launch till being compromised to be able to run custom "home brew" and pirated software (3.16 years). If you date it from when they removed the "Other OS" feature, it falls right in line with every other hacked game system (Xbox/360, game cube, wii, ps2, dreamcast...). Bottom line, if you don't allow people to install linux, enough people will be motivated to break your system to do just that, also opening the can-of-worms that is pirated software.

True! That is very true, and I'm sure he's having a devil of a time right now.

But -- pay attention here -- the cat is out of the bag. And I think original poster's point is that if you don't give geeks some reasonable access to a device, to do something innocuous (install Linux) that doesn't muck with your DRM, they will break your paltry encryption and publish the hack. Regardless of the personal consequences. 'S how geeks are. And the rest of us will turn the hack into haiku and t-shirts and spread it all over the net and sundry, and you'll never EVER get that particular cat back in that particular bag.

That being the case, and acknowledging that he's in a heap 'o' trouble, and whether or not Sony has the high ground here, Sony could have saved themselves a lot of grief by just keeping the damned "Other OS" feature on. Can we agree on that?

Thats nonsense. Geohotz broke the hypervisor before they pulled support for the PS3 fat. They pulled support as a direct result of his hacking.

That is not an appropriate response. You don't remove features for everyone just because you don't like how someone is using them.

The slims were never advertised as supporting Other OS. No one ever lost Other OS who owned a PS3 slim.

I understand that they've essentially removed Other OS for the old, fat ones as well.

You can get a better Linux machine than the PS3 slim anyways. These hackers are not going to use the PS3 for linux after this. They are just going to move on to the next device. The break machines that people paid good money for and move on. All for a feature that no one, includeing them, uses.

Sony was the one who broke it. People did use it for homebrew, and anyway you still don't remove features from products you already sold even if no one uses them.

Not the end of your karma, but I'll burn some of mine by saying that your opinion is twisted. Even if Geohot threw the first punch, Sony's reaction was completely over-the-top and illegal. One person attempting to hack your system does not give you the ethical right to screw over your entire customer base. In all fairness to both of us, Sony has burned a lot more karma.

Car analogy. You buy a shiny new car with an amazing steering wheel warmer, but you live in a warm environment. Because somebody was researching a way to use that steering wheel warmer to do something the company deemed as nefarious, it disabled that feature on every car. You may not have been affected, it may only have bothered a few dozen drivers. But that does not change the fact that an advertised feature was removed from a product. I'm not painting Geohot as a modern Robin Hood, but he didn't pull the trigger...Sony did. I won't even bother responding to your personal attack because to be honest, if you're on this site and see all geeks as basement dwelling loners then you have a lot to learn.

Geohot was the one who threw the first punch, he broke through the hypervisior using "other OS" and "bus glitching", Sony removed "other OS" in response.

Regardless whether you think that was the right response, it's not unexpected and unprovoked.

Why should we disregard whether or not it was an appropriate response? That matters a great deal. Taking away features from everyone is an extreme overreaction. It could be expected since consumers seem to have no rights, but that doesn't justify it.

It's kind of like saying "Those people currently protesting against their governments threw the first punch. Regardless whether you think it was the right response, police cracking down with lethal force was neither unexpected nor unprovoked." I'd say it's still unprovoked.

If you think about the computing world today I don't think it is overstating things to say that it would be very different if not for the fact that reverse engineering of the original IBM PC bios was permitted by law.

Geohot's tinkering may not lead to such change but his freedom to tinker with his own equipment and talk about his tinkering should nonetheless be supported. I have had Playstation

So Sony sends one of their expensive lawyers to court against an individual, and gets a broad temporary restraining order against him "ex parte"... meaning he didn't even get a _chance_ to fucking respond.

Oh, and despite this being a "temporary" restraining order, it's actually indefinite.

Regardless of how you feel about it, the TRO was proper. There is a chance that Sony could win its case and whatever damages they are alleging would certainly continue during the trial if not constrained. That's all there is to a TRO. It's only "indefinite" in the sense that the trial itself has no predictable end date.

And that is indefinite enough. It's easy to drag out a case. For instance, in patent cases, the fight for the initial "temporary" injunction is usually the most important part -- and certai

From the presentation I saw, it looks like roughly 80-90% of the work in completely pwning the PS3 was unrelated to piracy or cheating. That is, roughly 10-20% of what they did could've been used for piracy, the rest was for the complete and permanent ability to run any homebrew they like without restrictions, including (say) Linux with access to the PS3's GPU.

Also, note that the PS3 was pretty much left alone until Sony killed Other OS. So long as people were allowed to run Linux on the PS3, it was left al